Garage Sales
by Pickwick12
Summary: The story of detective and a landlady from their first meeting at a garage sale through their relationship. You asked for more than the first chapter-here you go! Now ongoing.
1. Garage Sales

South Floridian towns are like splatter paintings. A dash of vibrant purple flowers over there is side-by-side with the gray of a concrete elementary school over here and the orange of an art-deco surf shop on the other side of the street. Walk for any length of time, and you won't be able to miss a garage sale or a thrift store or an antique shop. You never know if you'll find a hidden gem like an Andy Warhol print from the 1970's or just Uncle Andy's failed attempt at watercolor. That's the thrill of the thing. It's why thousands of Floridians awaken at unearthly hours every Saturday—to Garage Sale, an activity that must always be depicted in capital letters.

Mary Hudson awoke to the sound of her alarm buzzing at one of those unearthly hours. As reality returned, she realized with a start that she was taking up more than her usual third of the bed. Harold wouldn't like that. She looked over to his empty side, and everything came back with a jolt. Of course Harold wasn't here. He was sitting in jail for a murder he had surely committed, but they were about to let him out. Insufficient evidence. It made her stomach turn.

_Get with it, Mary Hudson_, she said to herself as she got up and dressed and smoothed her hair. Her new friend Alice, the one from the grocery store, had invited her to do an American thing today, to ride around with her and look at garage sales and charity shops. She was determined to go, and she was determined to have a good time. She wasn't really sure why anyone would spend a whole day looking at other people's cast-offs, but she was set on finding out.

The door closed behind her, and she went out into the intensely humid air, already oppressive even before the sun had fully risen. She would never have chosen to come here, and she would never understand why anyone wanted to retire to a place where one could hardly catch breath outside for four or five months of the year. London might be wet and foggy, but it wasn't like this, as if the sun had singled you out and decided to beam on you specifically until you were ready to lie down and die underneath a blanket of hot, wet air. She shielded her eyes against the blinding rays breaking through the clouds and walked across the street to Publix, the supermarket where she had first met Alice.

Alice was everything Mary was not—loud, bright, chatty, and outgoing. At a different time and place, perhaps, Mary would have gently rebuffed her efforts at friendship, put off by her boisterous manner. But this was not that time, and Mary Hudson needed a friend. That's why she had let Alice persuade her to come today.

The hour was too early for the store to be open, so Mary waited on a bench outside. She waited five minutes, then ten, and finally fifteen, but Alice did not appear. Not for the first time, Mary wished she had a mobile phone. She would get one, Harold or no Harold. After twenty minutes, Mary decided Alice was not coming. Time to go home. Slightly surprised at herself, she realized that wasn't what she wanted to do. She couldn't spend another day holed up with her sewing and the television, waiting for the lawyer to tell her Harold was about to be free.

Instead, she walked back across the street with a determined tread and went to the condominium parking lot, where Harold's Volkswagen was parked. He would never let her drive it when he was home, but he wasn't here to stop her now. She got into the car and turned on the ignition. Mary Hudson was going Garage Saleing.

She drove past the huge Methodist church, bigger than any house of worship she had ever seen in England, and Sam's Bar-B-Q, which had given her food poisoning when she ate there. Scanning street signs carefully, she turned left onto Meleleuca Lane. This, Alice had told her, was the gold standard for Garage Salers, a long street of above-averagely wealthy people who weren't averse to putting their castoffs out for the masses on the weekend. She parked next to large group of other cars in a vacant lot at the end of the street, hoping her hip wouldn't give out before she could get back.

Mary started down the street with a determined tread. People were already swarming the houses with garage sale tables out, and she regretted the time she had lost waiting for Alice. Oh well. She had made it through plenty of sales at Sainsbury's and Boots back home, and she could make it through this. With a frequent shopper's instinctive eye, she skipped over the first two sales. Too many people. Too picked over. The third, however, was medium-sized with three tables in front of a two-story brick house, and the crowd browsing the hodgepodge of stock was minimal. She moved toward it, and as she did, she heard why the crowd had cleared off.

"—priceless family heirloom!"

"—bought for next to nothing at a charity shop."

She caught snatches of an argument going on between a short, red-faced woman behind a cash box and a tall, almost painfully thin young man with an English accent who was holding up the most hideous thing Mary had ever seen. It was the skull of some kind of cattle with huge horns, which would have been macabre in itself, but someone had seen fit to fill its empty eye sockets with light bulbs. She could only imagine how ugly it would be when turned on.

As Mary watched, the red-faced woman jerked the horrible object out of the man's grasp. "I can't let this go for less than forty-five dollars. My father would roll over in his grave!"

"Your father never even saw this," said the young man, speaking quickly. "It's no more than twenty years old at the most. I'll give you five dollars."

Mary saw the woman's eyes finally travel over to her, and the red face suddenly became the picture of good-humor. "May I help you, ma'am?"

"I just wondered what the problem is," said Mary, smiling as kindly as possible at the woman and the young man, who looked strangely calm for being in the middle of an altercation.

"It's no problem," said the woman guardedly. "This man doesn't want to pay what this piece is worth." Mary hardly thought the monstrosity in front of her warranted the word "piece," but she held her tongue.

"What's your side, then?" she asked the tall man, who looked down at her with his piercing eyes for a long, appraising moment before answering.

"This was made by an artist from the midwestern United States in the 1990's, and it was purchased for very little." He ran his hands lovingly over the surface of the disgusting object, while the lady clutched it protectively. "If you look here, you can see where she's tried to get rid of the traces of a tag, the sticky sort they use at the thrift stores around here. When I found it, it was thrown over there with a bunch of children's toys. No priceless heirloom would have been treated that way."

"But—but, no! No less than thirty-eight dollars," the woman sputtered, looking cornered. Mary knew that look. When a woman looked like that, it meant she was about to put her foot down to save face. She didn't know why she should care, but something about the way the gaunt, graceful young man looked at the nasty thing tugged at her. She pulled her wallet out of her purse.

"I'll take it for thirty-eight dollars." The young man's face registered blank astonishment, while the red woman was all smiles. She took Mary's fifty dollar bill and made change, then wrapped the skull in a brown paper bag and handed it to her. The moment Mary grasped it, she handed it to the young man. "Here you are, dear. I think this is what you wanted." The young man took the bag and pulled the skull out by the horn, hugging it against his thin frame. He didn't say anything, but she didn't mind. He looked so happy.

Mary smiled benignly at the woman with the cash box, who looked furious that the young man had gotten what he wanted without paying, and walked on down the street. After a moment, she felt something behind her and realized she was being followed. She looked back and met the eyes of the young man, who smiled at her, a smile that took his face from elegant and somber to childlike.

"My name's Sherlock Holmes," he said, thrusting his hand out awkwardly.

Mary shook it. "Mine is Mary Hudson. Would you like to shop with me?"

Sherlock looked confused for a minute, as if he didn't know how to respond. "All right," he said after a while.

He was the strangest companion Mary had ever had. He wouldn't talk for long stretches of time, and then all of a sudden, he would see something on a table, something as innocent-looking as a child's tea set, and it would set him off on a burst of factual information about the item's history. At first, she wondered if he was making it all up, if he had one of those psychological diseases that caused a person to fabricate complicated lies for no apparent reason, but after a while she realized that he was telling the truth. It was too logical, too likely. He knew the things he was saying. She began to be amazed at him.

After an hour, Mary's hip was beginning to ache, and the crowd of shoppers was beginning to dissipate. She looked over at Sherlock, who was fingering an old-fashioned magnifying glass. "I'm a little tired. I'd like some breakfast. How about you?"

He looked over at her, again surprised. "I'm fine."

"I'm not," said Mary, smiling. "Come and keep me company." She wasn't sure how he would respond to this, but he followed her back to the car like an overgrown bloodhound puppy. "Is your car here?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I walked."

"Get in, then." Mary looked on in amusement as Sherlock folded himself into the tiny Volkswagen, and then she pulled away from the sale-lined street and back into the small hubbub of downtown.

She wasn't sure why she liked the young man, but she did. There was something supremely in command and supremely helpless about him, all at the same time. He was utterly brilliant, she could already tell, but he also seemed a little bit unsure about what to do with himself. He couldn't be older than his early twenties, she didn't think. "Here we are," she said brightly, breaking the silence as she pulled into Cracker Barrel, the most American of American restaurants.

A young woman seated Mary and Sherlock at a table beside a window. The middle of the table held one of those peg games with the goal to leave only one. Mary scanned the offerings of pancakes and biscuits and breakfast meats while Sherlock solved the game on the first try and then played subsequent games where he left two, three, and four pegs on purpose. When the waitress came, Mary ordered a much larger breakfast than she could eat, hoping she could tempt her thin companion. The waitress's eyes lingered on Sherlock, and she seemed sorry to leave.

"Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock finally said, breaking a long silence. "There's a reason I'm here." His eyes were serious, but also kind. Mary was good at reading people, and she could tell he meant to be gentle.

"What is it, dear?" she asked, wondering what someone who had met her that morning could possibly be so worried about.

"I want to help you with Harold."

Mary looked back at him, doing her own appraisal. She saw a young face, a sad one, with beautiful bones that protruded a little too much from almost translucent skin. She saw intelligence and confidence, the absolute belief that somehow he could do what he offered. She saw need. For some reason, the young man in front of her had to help, had to try, at least. She had no idea if he could really do anything, but she knew she couldn't refuse him, no more than she could have walked away at the garage sale. "All right," she said quietly, and she was rewarded immediately by the sight of luminous happiness filling his unusual eyes.

_You never know what you'll find when you go Garage Saleing_, Alice always said. Mary Hudson looked across the table at Sherlock Holmes, and she had to agree.


	2. The Violin

Sherlock Holmes picked up his violin and tucked it lovingly into its velvet case. Both it and its master had a mission this night.

The spare young man pulled a long coat from the peg on his door, his nose wrinkling at the sight of the peeling wallpaper and uneven floor. As he stepped into the hall, he allowed himself a moment of irritation that these accommodations were all he could currently afford without an allowance from his brother, something he would never take. Nevertheless, it was a pleasantly chilly night, and Sherlock had his wooden friend under his arm.

The detective amused himself as he walked the streets by deducing the lives and professions of everyone he passed, but by the time he reached his destination, he was thoroughly bored with all the mundane lack of cleverness he'd encountered. London was growing stupider by the moment; of that he was sure.

Sherlock arranged his face into some semblance of a smile as he approached the door of the two-story building. He was well aware that he could look imposing, even severe, when he wished, but he didn't want to look fearsome tonight. He lightly banged the brass knocker.

"Oh my goodness, it's you." The little lady who answered the door was pale. Sherlock noticed the signs of anxiety and lack of sleep in an instant.

"Good evening, Mrs. Hudson." She looked as if she might like to collapse against him, but instead she squared her shoulders and led the way inside. He respected that.

The flat was spacious and old-fashioned, covered with the tastes of an old lady and the possessions of a widow. He'd never been there before, but he'd known exactly how it would look. "Would you like some tea, dear?" she hovered as he perched on the edge of a red antique chair.

"Certainly." The young man allowed his long legs to stretch themselves comfortably. Mrs. Hudson wasn't the sort of person who would mind.

After a few moments, she brought a tray with a flowered teapot and a plate of scones and placed it on the small wooden end table next to him. "It's nice to have someone to look after. Harold always said—" she trailed off.

"It's been five years," Sherlock commented matter-of-factly. He didn't understand the wistful smile that crossed Mrs. Hudson's face.

"Five years or five days, Sherlock. Some things are a lot more than time." He knew what she meant, but he also knew he didn't fully understand it, so he refrained from answering. He noticed that his companion didn't pour herself a cup of tea or eat anything.

"It's like you to come tonight." Her voice was thin. "You always pop up just when I need you." Her smile did not conceal the tear he saw travel down the lines of her face.

Wordlessly, Sherlock bent down and picked up the violin case from underneath his chair. His long fingers deliberately removed the elegant instrument, and he saw Mrs. Hudson's confusion turn to curiosity. He began to play.

The only time Sherlock ever lost himself, let go of his hyper awareness—simply _felt_—was when he played music or listened to it being played. It was as if a whole part of him lay dormant until the notes swelled around him and caressed him with their perfection.

Tonight he didn't let himself drift away; tonight wasn't for him; tonight he played the songs his mother had loved best, soft, comforting melodies that hinted at warm fires and peaceful times. He didn't know how long he played.

After a long while, when his long fingers were at last beginning to ache, Sherlock saw Mrs. Hudson's eyes close. She was asleep. He glanced at the clock above the mantelpiece and found that it was far into the night. He had accomplished his purpose; the hour of death had long passed. Harold would trouble his wife no more; justice had finally seen to that.

With nearly soundless movements, Sherlock closed his violin in its case once more and went into the night, leaving his sleeping companion with a gentle kiss on the cheek and an afghan on her lap.

The detective smiled to himself as he reentered his squalid flat. He'd seen something in Mrs. Hudson's window—a handwritten advertisement for a lodger.

* * *

**A/N You asked for a sequel to the first chapter, and here you are. Hope you enjoyed it. There may be more in the future :)**


	3. The Perfect Flatmate

She set the rent high on purpose.

Sherlock appeared on the doorstep of 221 a week after Harold's death, the night that should have been horrible but was instead filled with the memory of the violin and the young man's light touch as he took awkwardly graceful care of her. This time, instead of his instrument, he carried a small black notebook.

"Hello, Mrs. Hudson," he said, "I'd like to move in."

She could have lived easily on what he had. It wasn't much, certainly not an overabundance considering the size and location of the flat, but she had plenty of income and didn't need more. She very nearly said, "I'll take whatever you can give," like a mother would have told a son, she fancied. She could imagine the joy that would fill his mercurial eyes, and she wanted to put it there.

But a mother would have known. A mother would have looked at his thinness and his awkwardness and the way he sometimes, once in a very long while, seemed desperate to please, but only when he thought she wasn't looking. A mother would have realized he needed a friend.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock," she said, "you'll need a flatmate to be able to afford it."

Oh, how she despised herself in that moment. She hated his look of surprise followed by resignation. It wasn't that he'd underestimated the flat's worth; no, his thought was that he'd underestimated her. He left without saying another word, his notebook tucked in the pocket of his long coat. She was afraid she'd never see him again.

Three days later, he brought his things and began to move in. She didn't ask what he intended to do about the extra rent. She just watched as an entire chemistry set found its way to the kitchen table, a skull took residence on the mantelpiece, and the horrid steer skull she'd bought him took pride of place on the wall. After a few hours, the flat was so covered in possessions that she had no idea how another human being could possibly occupy it. She held her tongue.

To Mary Hudson's amazement, only four additional days passed before Sherlock came to the flat with someone else in tow, a man who was short and fair and had a limp and one of the kindest faces she'd ever seen. No one more opposite to Sherlock could possibly exist in Britain, she thought. He introduced himself as John Watson.

She watched John carefully as she gave him the official tour of the flat and teased the two men gently about their relationship. She saw how easily they spoke, how quickly the diminutive doctor took the unusual young man in stride. She saw, too, how happy Sherlock seemed, how relaxed.

She was far from surprised when they agreed to take the flat on the spot.

That night, as Mary Hudson went to bed, she shook her head. She'd underestimated Sherlock Holmes. Of course he'd pick the perfect flatmate. Of course he would.

She wasn't sorry about the rent.


	4. Mothers and Sons

Mary Hudson had never had a son.

She had never had a son until the day she saw the look in Sherlock Holmes's eyes that told her he would have had no qualms about sending the thug who'd tortured her to the morgue. It wasn't that she wanted him to do it; it was just the knowing that was important.

Afterward, once the inspector had come, she made tea. She always made tea. The doctor attended to her then. She knew he cared for her, but it was in that professional way, the way a careful physician's eyes take in a patient's injuries. He was an exceptionally good doctor, but he was not a son.

Sherlock—Sherlock was the one who put his arm around her and held her close, whose eyes asked what his voice could not—was she well, was she whole, would she be all right? She answered with a pat of his hand. Family doesn't really need words.

Once she'd washed all the dishes, she prepared to go back to her own flat, planning to slip away quietly while the boys spoke in low, excited voices about the case. They were back in their element, she in hers. All was right with the world.

She turned to leave, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her. She spun around to find Sherlock looming over her in his usual intense way. "I'm glad—" he said, leaving the sentence unfinished. She understood. He was glad she was alive, glad she was well, glad she was home. It was long since she had realized she meant home to him. That was her power, and it was immense. But she would never use it against him. That was what family meant—being entwined and twisted together until you couldn't be pulled apart, but never using what you had or what you knew to hurt, only to love.

Quickly, she covered the space between them, leaning against him so that he could hold her and once again speak in touch what he could not find the words to say. Really, she was holding him, and the strength in her thin arms was enough to hold a heart together.

Mary Hudson was not a housekeeper. She was a mother.

* * *

**A/N: **This story is ongoing, but I probably won't ever update it constantly. The relationship between Mrs. Hudson and Sherlock is a special one to me in all versions of the stories, and I never want to write about it just for the sake of writing. I always want to wait for the perfect inspiration.


	5. Flow

**Flow**

He hadn't meant to put her into violent hysterics. Then again, he hadn't expected John to punch him bloody, either. He needed to work on his anticipation of human emotional responses, he realized. That room in his mental attic was obviously lacking furniture.

He sat in his chair in the usual place, staring out the window and letting home wash over him. Normally, Sherlock Holmes was all about mindfulness, intentional observation, purposeful assimilation of every detail. Only occasionally did he allow himself the luxury of what some simply called flow.

At one time, only the needle and syringe had brought it out of him. Then, it was the music. As he'd grown older, and, he hoped, wiser, he'd found a way to take the journey in himself, to allow his mind to drift into neutral while his senses led him into random association and finally serenity.

He closed his eyes. He felt the fabric of his satin dressing gown around him and the stodgy caress of his armchair. Wavy strands of his hair, finally clean again, tickled his wide forehead, reminding him that while he might control many things, he would never be all powerful, not even when it came to the curls that insisted on growing out of his own head.

The flat smelled different, devoid for so long of his chemical experiments. Sweet, he realized, with a tinge of lemon. Mrs. Hudson's biscuits. He'd missed those biscuits, during nights alone in squalid flats and undercover. Funny what odd little things the mind chose to remember when it was under duress.

Or was it a little thing? As he let himself drift, the memories grew larger, and he saw the first time he'd ever eaten one of those biscuits, in Florida, the day Mrs. Hudson had invited him around to her condominium. He remembered the fear in her eyes and the way she jumped at every noise, scared that her husband would be let go and return to terrorize her again.

He remembered, too, the day she'd slipped him one of those biscuits in court. You're not supposed to eat in the middle of a capital murder case, but Mrs. Hudson hadn't cared. She'd seen his pallor and the shake of his hands and recognized that he hadn't eaten in many hours. That was when he'd realized how observant she could be.

Then, too, was the day of the picnic. Sherlock didn't go on picnics. He hated picnics. But this had been a picnic to celebrate that Harold was dead. They both knew, but neither of them said. He'd learned, by then, that some things were better left unsaid. She'd taught him that.

The last time had been just before—goodbye. An ordinary tea on an ordinary day. "These are Sherlock's favorite," she'd said to John when she'd brought them in. "He doesn't say, but I know."

There were a lot of things he didn't say to Mrs. Hudson. Things he'd never said. It was a good thing, he thought, that she already knew.


End file.
